Farmscape hopes to bring farming to the city

Mar. 19, 2013
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The Duffie family, from left, Hanako, 11, Chuck, Jen and Nara,, 9, enjoy vegetables from their Farmscape garden at their Claremont, Calif., home. The entire front yard has been turned into a garden. / Robert Hanashiro, USA TODAY

The urban farming company is trying out a new marketing technique - Farmscape is running for mayor as a write-in candidate. Its mission statement? "Turn the city back into a farm, one yard at a time."

"I have to warn you, we're not ahead in the polls," said Bailin, media manager.

Despite slim chances of winning, the company is trying to bring awareness to the idea that refarming the city is an acceptable platform on which to run.

The company is small, with 12 employees, and everyone is close. Chief Executive Officer Jesse DuBois met the other founders in college. After graduation, a few friends moved to Los Angeles to create an urban farming company. DuBois, who was planning to move to the city to try screenwriting, got the call.

"Everyone has a different connection of some kind, someone's high school friend or someone's post-college girlfriend," DuBois said.

The founders gathered in 2008 to see if they could bring their passion for fresh, healthy food to Los Angeles' concrete jungle. The timing wasn't perfect. The company started in the midst of the Great Recession, when organic local food wasn't as trendy as it is now, Bailin says.

"It felt daunting, even presumptuous, to propose a different way of doing things. Farms are enormous; gardens are small," DuBois said. "One of the bigger challenges for us was holding fast to our belief that gardening could be a valuable component of the food supply."

Despite the hardship, they found some interest, and word continued to spread. Farmscape has created more than 300 gardens and maintains 150 of them on a weekly basis.

An urban garden doesn't come cheap. A 4-by-12-foot raised bed installation costs $1,350, and customers install two to four boxes, on average. If you want someone to maintain your garden, plan to pay another $65 a week, but Farmscape says the experience is worth it.

"I'm sure, pound-for-pound, we're more expensive than the farmers market, but what people get with us is they have absolute knowledge of where their food is coming from," said Weston Westenborg, Farmscape's lead farmer.

Every season, Westenborg creates a crop catalog that he e-mails to members. They decide what they want, then e-mail their personal farmers an order. The farmers plant the selected plants. If you opt for weekly maintenance, the farmer will harvest plants and look for bugs, too.

Janine Brownstone, a retired social worker, doesn't have any complaints - except that her house is too close to the beach to grow all the vegetables she wants. Brownstone currently has two raised beds and plans to add more within the next year.

"We tried to grow crops on our own and failed miserably," Brownstone said. She and her husband pay for the weekly service and look forward to the harvests.

"They put a basket on my back step; it's like the elves come and bring me food," Brownstone said. The last harvest had enough vegetables for more than a weeks' worth of salads, and "broccoli for days."

Bill Maynard, vice president of the American Community Gardening Association, said that while urban farming isn't a new concept, "everybody is putting a different twist on it, which is fine; any way that people can eat more vegetables is a good thing."

Chuck Duffie, a writer, had his entire front yard turned into a garden. The space has 14 raised 4-by-4 beds arranged in a tier.

An entire bed is devoted to edible flowers, after his 9-year-old daughter, Nara, asked their personal farmer, Todd Lininger, if there was such thing. Lininger researched and found some.

Lininger isn't your average gardener. He's a friend, and in some ways, a teacher for the family. The Duffies homeschool their daughters. Lininger created a curriculum that combines gardening, science and nutrition for the girls to utilize their outdoor classroom. Duffie plans to offer the curriculum and garden to other families in the homeschool network once they get started.

"There's that community philosophy behind urban garden," Duffie said. "Once we get this rolling, we'll invite others to join in."

The company doesn't just do home gardens. Farmscape created a flourishing ecosystem on the roof of the 13-story Jonathan Club - bees and butterflies make the trip up now. Japanese restaurant N/Naka relies on a Farmscape garden to provide hard-to-find organic Japanese vegetables and herbs. The company is also looking into offering live walls in the future.